MobiSurf: improving co-located collaboration through integrating mobile devices and interactive surfaces

One of the most popular scenarios for advertising interactive surfaces in the home is their support for solving co-located collaborative tasks. Examples include joint planning of events (e.g., holidays) or deciding on a shared purchase (e.g., a present for a common friend). However, this usually implies that all interactions with information happen on the common display. This is in contrast to the current practices to use personal devices and further, most people's behavior to constantly switch between individual and group phases because people have differing search strategies, preferences, etc. We therefore investigated how the combination of personal devices and a simple way of exchanging information between these devices and an interactive surface changes the way people solve collaborative tasks compared to an existing approach of using personal devices. Our study results clearly indicate that the combination of personal and a shared device allows users to fluently switch between individual and group work phases and users take advantage of both device classes.